Industry to Test 2,800 Major Chemicals for Health, Environmental Effects

The Clinton Administration, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) today jointly announced a six-year program to test 2,800 major industrial chemicals for their health and environmental effects.

“We’ve all been operating in the dark when it comes to chemical safety,” said EDF executive director Fred Krupp. “This testing program will move us much closer to what the public is entitled to expect: assurance that chemicals in our economy are not causing unknown harms to our health or the environment.”

The unprecedented, cooperative program covers US high-production chemicals, each produced or imported in a volume of more than 1 million pounds per year. All tests are to be completed by the year 2004. Industry’s estimated cost of the testing program is between $500 and $700 million.

“For far too long, our legal and regulatory system has failed to distinguish between chemicals that are known to be safe and those that simply haven’t been tested. This program marks the end of the ignorance-is-bliss era in chemical regulation,” said EDF senior attorney Karen Florini.

The testing program follows a landmark 1997 study by EDF, Toxic Ignorance, which showed that most high-volume industrial chemicals in the US lacked even basic screening tests for their potential health effects, as far as the public record could show. US EPA and CMA confirmed EDF’s findings in separate follow-up studies, and Vice President Gore called on the US chemical industry to develop an accelerated testing plan.

Under the program announced today, chemical manufacturers will have 13 months to volunteer their products for testing, after which EPA will order tests for the chemicals that have not been volunteered. EDF will monitor testing progress and provide free on-line information to the public via the Internet, on a chemical-by-chemical and company-by-company basis.

“More tests in less time is to everyone’s benefit,” said EDF senior attorney David Roe. “This innovative program is cheaper and more efficient from industry’s perspective, and faster and more comprehensive from the public’s perspective, than what anyone’s lawyers could have forced.” Under previous commitments, testing of high-production chemicals would have taken approximately 50 years to complete.